NEW DELHI: The Madhya Pradesh high court today extended till 15 May the stay on switch-off of analogue signals in the cities of Indore, Bhopal and Jabalpur covered in Phase II of digitisation.

The extension came after the Jabalpur bench of the court noted that some of the respondents (mostly multi-system operators) had not filed their replies to the notice issued in the last hearing, and counsel Greesham Jain for one of the petitioners said he had received the replies in some cases just yesterday and wanted more time to file his counter-affidavit.

The court is hearing five petitions - including a public interest litigation by a lawyer, a consumer body, one LCO including Rashmi Dubey, and one by an MSO run by Nilesh Rawal linked to Digicable - citing shortage of set top boxes, billing issues and some other problems linked to digital addressable system.

As on 21 April, the status of seeding in Madhya Pradesh was 86.32 per cent in Bhopal, 103.04.per cent in Indore, and 45.84 per cent in Jabalpur.

Meanwhile the stay in the Andhra Pradesh for the cities of Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam was extended to 4 June. Stay also continues to be in force in Chennai, which was part of Phase I.